Excavators and backhoes come equipped with a bucket to excavate earth and other material. These machines are designed to load their buckets toward the operator. The power pull is toward the machine. The bucket of such machines is not shaped to dig out rocks or other objects that may be partially disposed within the ground. While power can be applied to the bucket in an outbound direction, little use can be made of such power.
Typical manufacturers of such machines include J. I. Case, Ford, John Deere, Caterpillar, and perhaps Massey Ferguson, as well as Kubota and other Japanese companies.
One of the problems that these machines suffer is their inability to grasp large items such as boulders, or pieces of woods. These machines are best suited for granular material such as gravel or dirt which can be scooped up. Earth moving equipment is quite expensive, and therefore the need to do double duty, i.e. lift and carry large bulky items as well as scoop granular or loamy material is also needed. This need has been addressed by the prior art.
One such item is the Hoe clamp brand of clamping arm. This device which is covered by U.S. Pat. No. 4,519,739, is an active device in that it utilizes the bucket cylinder for clamping force. Another prior art device, which is intended primarily for Ford backhoes is the Big Thumb brand attachment. It is the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 3,273,729. It operates through the bucket control handle and utilizes the parent backhoe's hydraulic system.
Reference is made to the Industrial Equipment Attachment Guide, 3rd edition, published by John Deere Company, Moline Ill. A plurality of bucket clamp manufacturers names are set out, all of whose products are adapted to hold oversize, bulky, or unwieldy objects within the bucket of a Deere backhoe or excavator.
Many of the prior art units are hydraulically operated, a fact which places great strain on the hydraulic system of the earth moving machine. There is a need therefore for a low cost easily mountable non-hydraulic claw which can be readily utilized by a plurality of earthmovers.
It is an object of this invention to provide a low cost non-hydraulic claw for use with a backhoe or excavator bucket.
It is another object to provide a backhoe claw that can be mounted upon the crowd of an excavator and moved from a stowed position thereupon to an operative position quickly and easily.
Yet another object is to provide an improved claw that can better hold odd shaped objects within the excavator bucket.
A further object is to provide a claw that can be utilized with a plurality of manufacturers earth moving equipment.
These and other objects of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.
The invention accordingly comprises the apparatus possessing the construction, combination of elements and arrangement of parts which are exemplified in the following detailed description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings.